While I intend to nurture this blog at least until the end of the year—after all, my New Year’s Resolution is to write half a million words—I’ll no longer be updating it daily. Instead, I’ll post updates every Sunday and Tuesday, as part of my blogging rotation…

Themes and Challenges

For instance, May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and June includes Aromatherapy Awareness Week… So for this month, I’ll focus on my pursuit for better mental health (as well as provide tons of links about different mental illnesses, disorders, etc.), and next month, I’ll look more at accessing atypical neurological frameworks through smell.
I’m also adventuring into a few new 30-day May Challenges for Mental Health Awareness —but these are to give myself more awareness of the inner workings of my mental health,…not so much to provide awareness to a community. 😉

Still, I’d like to invite my readers on my journey to experience better mental health. Who knows—maybe my methodology can help you. Here are the three steps I plan to take, and the ways I intend to document my progress…

Step One 💌 3×7 Love Notes

In my planner, I’m exploring 3 categories of love 7 times per day:

Self-love: 7 positive “I am” statements;

Love for others: 7 gratitudes;

Love for the creative process: 7 story ideas;

Today, it only took me 13 minutes to come up with my seven “I am” statements, followed by seven gratitudes and seven story ideas… But I imagine, on other days, this practice may leer upwards to a half hour or more.

Still, my hope is by combining this 30-day challenge with 30 days of 10+ daily meditations through the Calm app, I’ll improve my thinking habits. My meditation practice is going well so far…

30 days of 20-30 min of meditation—to be tracked by regular updates at From North On (so I can simultaneously try meditating at different locations); &

30 days of 20-30 min of sunlight a day (gardening, taking a walk, visiting the nursery, or meditating at the patio table), to be tracked by regular updates at My Quest for Chicken (so I can also track my pseudo-farming).

And maybe next month’s goals, if I don’t need a new prototype for this month’s attempts:

30 days of different aromatherapy recipes;

30 days of 30-60 min+ of meditation; &

30 days of 30-60 min+ social anxiety combo sunlight gradual exposure (walking to the coffee shop, visiting the nursery, or photographing the zoo).

Given how much autistic people lean into habitual behavior, the sooner I can break negative thinking patterns, the better. Here’s to better mental health!

3 comments

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